


Falling, and Falling, and Falling Together

by poetikat



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, M/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:56:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetikat/pseuds/poetikat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one life, Steve spends sixty-six years asleep after he crashes into the Arctic.  In that same lifetime, Loki sees horrors no one should ever witness as he falls through a black hole.  This is not that lifetime.  A broken god meets a lonely human, and together they mend, heal, and find love where they least expect it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Inside: Music

For a brief, bright moment, his heart in his throat, Loki clings to Gungnir and waits for his father’s words of agreement, of approval, of approbation. Then –

“No, Loki.” Sorrowful, but firm, no room for argument and nothing but anger and disappointment in his fath – in Odin’s single eye.

The light is extinguished. His heart falls onto a stomach twisted in knots. And Loki lets go of Odin’s spear.

And falls.

And falls.

The bitter chill of space rips through his soft, fair-skinned ás body. He shudders at the very thought of shedding this form, but the cold is dulling his mind, stealing the blood from his hands and feet and sapping his energy. He wants to survive. With another shudder, a crawl of revulsion skittering up his spine, Loki forces his skin to change from the pale pink of a scholar and a prince of Asgard to a hideous sky blue. He can feel the changes he can’t lay eyes on; his bones grow dense, his vital organs pull closer together as a protective layer of fat forms beneath his narrow torso, his – that – between his legs, there, beneath – he cannot bring himself to think on it even now, despite how much it explained about him as he grew up and into puberty.

The closest he can get to acknowledgment is to wonder if he is Loki Laufeyson or Loki Laufeyjarson, as they both seem equally likely now.

Truly, after spending eleven months and eleven days as a mare before giving birth to an eight legged foal _– ‘Oh, Sleipnir, Hel, Jormungandr, Fenrir, will I ever see you again?’ –_ when he was a mere stripling, a smooth-cheeked adolescent, he really shouldn’t be so repulsed. But that is shape shifting, that is different, he has been a mare, a crone, a fly, a mortal maiden, a false ásynjur, so much more, and this, this is his true form, this monstrous blue creature with the blood red eyes, and it’s not supposed to come with any more unwanted surprises.

Still he falls, though the biting cold doesn’t gnaw at his strength or his wits as ferociously as before. Yet he lives.

Is this to be his life now? Loki, God of Endless Falling? It’s better than some of his other titles, and he came by this one honestly. Certainly nothing he’d need to defend his honor over. Mm. Perhaps Loki, God Whose Clever Plans to Humble a Brother and Inspire Pride in a Father Spiraled Out of his Control Because He Couldn’t Keep His Temper in Check and Ended with Him Pitched Over the Side of the Shattered Bifrost After he Tried to Commit Genocide? That’s fairly accurate, but a tad unwieldy. Loki, the Literally Fallen King of Asgard. That one, oh, that has a deliciously insulting sting to it.

When the skalds compose their poems and recite them before the court, how will they describe the falling Jotunn-who-thought-he-was-ás, Loki Laufeyson, Loki Laufeyjarson – he still hasn’t decided which is right – the liar with the honeyed words, whose actions will be decried as villainous and whose motivations surely won’t matter? Will Odin Allfather curb their tongues? Will Frigg ask for nuance, subtlety, a balanced examination of character in both thought and deed? Will Thor, boisterous Thor, call him ‘brother’ and loudly defend him against his detractors once again?

Loki thinks not. This, like many, many instances before, will turn into another moment of grand triumph for Thor.

He did try to kill Thor. Another poem in which he is cast as the villain, to be sealed thus in the minds of the Æsir forever, could be argued as just punishment. It could be argued as not punishment enough.

But he is Loki Laufeyson, or Laufeyjarson, God of Falling and Falling and Falling Some More, and there isn’t a soul around to argue what punishment he’s earned for all that he’s done.

There! A thread, a faint, shimmering thread, delicate and gold and out of reach. Loki can hear music, just the tiniest pops and hisses, brassy and happy and carefree, and he strains toward the elusive thread, wishing he could fall faster so he could hear more of the music, more of anything but frozen, unceasing silence. The space around him grows stronger, heavier, and for a heartbeat he wonders if he has indeed been named God of Falling, and has managed to control his speed. But no, no, space is pulling him now, there is no falling here, just the cold and the pull and the gold thread with the merry music, and he redoubles his efforts to grab hold of it before he is lost to whatever primal force awaits him in the dark, heavy void tugging him down.

He will not go to that dark and forbidding place without the music. A final, desperate swipe, and he tangles his fingers in the beautiful thread just as he is sucked inside, and the gloriously cheerful music swells, and –

Loki is not falling. He’s on the front porch of a house, the top step, really, and it’s midday, warm and balmy. The house stands out amongst the collection of shops and buildings and tenements surrounding it, all dated and drab and careworn in comparison to the crisp white of the house, the glossy dark blue of the door, the wide, shining windows with the curtains thrown back.

He’s on Midgard. Midgard in the late nineteen-thirties to mid nineteen-forties, would be his guess, somewhere in the New World, oh, what were they calling it now – North America, yes. And this little slice of dull and uncultured backwater is likely a neighborhood in a shining metropolis that the middle country’s people, the children of the United States, treasured as a beacon of culture, class, and civilization.

But one does not become clever by being unobservant, and Loki’s name was both praised (occasionally) and cursed (mostly) for his habit of being exceptionally clever.

If this is indeed Midgard, then there is something very wrong with this realm, for other than the sound of the music he followed, still faint, but clearer now, there was nothing but silence. No automobiles driving up and down the streets, engines rumbling and horns honking, exhaust pipes exhaling blue smoke, no children laughing or shrieking or crying as they play at war or rescue princesses or fight off dragons, no men in business wear walking to lunch from work, or to work from lunch, no women busy with their grocery shopping, happily chatting with the cashiers with a passel of squalling infants in tow.

This is an empty world. Empty but for the white house with the attractive blue door and the music coming from within.

Loki is not a brave god. Thor and Sif and the Warriors Three can have their bravery, and they’re welcome to his, too, if they don’t find a gift from him too distasteful. He is, however, a powerfully curious god, and he laughs under his breath. What the brave and the curious do after making the first move is where the distinction lies, but when it comes to mysteriously empty Midgardian neighborhoods, houses that don’t belong, and strange, wonderful music, both the brave god and the curious god will do the exact same thing: open the door.

He reaches for the doorknob and catches sight of his blue, blue hand, almost like an accent against the deeper blue sheen of the door, and forces his body to once again wear the guise of the ás he once believed he was. The blue rolls away and disappears as pink chases it off. His bones grow lighter. His organs rearrange themselves as the layer of fat vanishes. His – he is – less confusing – between his legs. Now, perhaps, he is ready to find some answers. He takes hold of the doorknob once again and turns it, and the door opens without a sound.

It’s even more baffling now that he’s stepped foot inside. It’s bigger than it should be; not by much, but the inside is definitely bigger than the outside. The floor is a beautiful pale hardwood, wide planks with knots and bumps and whorls aplenty, lovingly sanded down and sealed by hand, and every wall is a crisp, clean white, not cold or sterile, but warm, giving the impression that they’re not just walls, they’re canvases waiting to be used. There is a dark stone fireplace in the living room flanked by ceiling-high bookcases that draws the eye, each shelf overflowing with hardcover books missing dust jackets and titles along the spines, and armchairs and a sofa in soft grey suede that look like they were made to be fallen into at the end of a day, so broad and deep are their cushions. The dining room table is much like the floor, as are the chairs, but by the way only one chair is slightly askew while the other five are pushed in perfectly, it seems the owner of the house lives all alone.

The kitchen trades hardwood floors for large, hand-painted tiles in sunny colors, each one just the slightest bit different from its neighbors. He didn’t bother poking his nose in the refrigerator or the ice box or the pantry. There are bowls and plates and cups and a handful of silverware in a drying rack in one side of the sink. This empty Midgardian town has food, or at least the house does.

The laundry room is small and tidy, its walls as white as the others. The detergent smells fresh and clean, like sun-warmed cotton and sea air. The window above the washing machine gives a view into an impossibly big back yard, greener than green lawn neatly trimmed but not conquered, the blades of grass each the length of Loki’s hand, from the base of his palm to the tip of his middle finger. In one far corner a massive apple tree spreads its branches outward and upward, embracing the late spring sun, resplendent with tightly furled pink-white buds that will pull those branches down with their ripe, juicy weight in a few more months once they turn into fruit. In another, the laundry is hanging out to dry. Simple clothes. Slacks. Those denim trousers that will become so damned popular when this queer Midgardian neighborhood catches up with the rest of its world in another sixty or seventy years. Button up shirts in white or blue, tee shirts, white and gray and black and taupe and sometimes spattered with or smeared by a bright streak of color, a shock of yellow or a swipe of acid green. The owner of the house is a man, then, and apparently a man built like Thor if the width of the shoulders and length and waistline of the pants are any indication. A brawny man, then, a man of action. A man who apparently doesn’t care overmuch if he gets wild streaks of paint on his shirts. That, at least, is a pleasant change from Thor.

Loki walks quietly up the stairs, letting the music guide him past a large bathroom with more of those wonderful tiles and an enormous clawfoot tub, down the hall and past a bedroom dominated by a neatly made bed that could sleep two of Thor _and_ one of Volstagg comfortably, the topmost blanket a strange patchwork of fabric scraps that together blaze like a sunset when the clouds are just right and the weather beckons even the most determined library-dwellers outside to read in the garden for a change, a dresser of the same wood as the floorboards that looked crafted by a master carpenter against the wall, bits and ends and baubles scattered across the top, past a closed door across which the owner had painted the word “attic”, and into a large, airy room, canvases of all different sizes leaning against the walls, stacks of pencil sketches, piles of tinted charcoal drawings, crates of watercolor landscapes on heavy paper. He finds the source of the music first, a cumbersome, boxy thing sitting alone in a stand in the corner. A – Damn it, what is it called, a ray-doe? It is hard to believe that such an uninspiring looking device is capable of producing such lovely sounds.

He finds the reason the ray-doe is on in the space of his next breath. The occupant of this strange house in this empty neighborhood is sitting on a stool in front of a tilted table, pencil in hand as he draws carefully, a small furrow between his eyebrows. “Be with you in a minute,” he says absently. “Just…wait…a…damn it, too heavy, where’s my five H…minute.”

Loki takes him at his word – something he’ll devote a great deal of time to wondering about later, as he takes no one, especially strangers in odd homes in even odder neighborhoods, at their word – and simply leans against the open door frame and looks him over as he makes a minute erasure with a piece of soft gray rubber. He’s hunched over his drawing, but his torso is long and his legs are longer, and Loki would wager that the strange man, when standing, would come to within an inch or two of his own height. His hair is blond, a bit shaggy, and his square jaw clean shaven. Intent blue eyes. Strong, well-shaped nose. A dreamer’s mouth and a stubborn chin. Ears –

“Your pencil is behind your ear,” Loki says. The man laughs softly and retrieves his ‘five H’ pencil without a word.

Broad-shouldered and well-muscled, indeed, and dressed not for war on a battlefield, but for war against ink and charcoal and watercolor and oil paint and pastels and paint thinner. His uniform of tee shirt and denim pants, both threadbare, are clearly losing the fight, as is his exposed skin. There’s a dribble of orange across his bare left foot, and the smallest two toes on his right are the color of mint. Fuchsia has claimed prime territory on the back of his left arm in a messy swipe that caught both skin and sleeve in one go. A delicate peach runs in a thin, drippy line from thumbnail to elbow on the right.

“Mmm…hmm. Come here. What do you think?”

Loki walks into the room and looks over the man’s shoulder at the piece he’d been working on. A woman, not yet in her middle years but prematurely aged, whether from stress or hardship or illness Loki knows not, looks back up at him, smiling across the child-sized jacket sleeve she’s mending as she sits upon a sofa in a small room, barren of luxuries yet somehow cozy nonetheless.

“She looks kind,” Loki says, surprising himself with the truth. “Kind, and tired, and despite that – she looks happy. As if she’s been surprised by something that’s brightened her day. Nothing big, but enough to make her smile a little wider, and a little easier.”

“Great,” the man says, turning to face Loki fully and giving him a smile of his own. “That’s exactly what I was going for. Thanks. This’ll definitely go in my ‘to paint’ pile.”

There’s a smudge of charcoal along his cheekbone. “Glad I could be of service,” Loki says, rather than point this out. “Now –”

“Yes, the important things,” the man said, and those intent eyes lock on to him. “I know I didn’t think you up, because I haven’t thought anyone up or hallucinated any people, and it’s been –” a quick dart of his eyes to the calendar painted on his wall “– four and a half months here in fake Brooklyn by myself. I have a pretty tight grip on my sanity, so I’d know if I’d start to lose it.” Loki wordlessly casts a dubious eye up and down the man’s outfit. “Hey, buddy, art is very relaxing. You should try it sometime. Anyway, I’ve been here long enough to come to two conclusions. Either I’m dead, and this is one bizarre afterlife, or I didn’t die when I crashed the plane, and all this is just taking place in my mind while I’m busy being an icicle on the outside. So…is it ‘rest in peace’, or are you in my head?”

“Well, seeing as I’m not dead, or I wasn’t the last time I checked, I’d say it’s a safe assumption that I’m in your head,” Loki tells him. He’s not sure which of them is stranger for accepting the impossible – no, the extremely improbable, apparently – so calmly, but it does seem better than pitching a fit and running screaming into the empty streets. “I followed the music.”

“You what?”

“I followed the music,” Loki says again, patiently. “I was falling, and there was this little thread just out of reach, and there was music coming from it. Something out there, in the nothingness I was falling through, started pulling me in, and I didn’t want to go alone, so I grabbed the thread and landed on your front porch.”

“Interesting.” The man gets to his feet and offers Loki his hand to shake. Loki had been right; they are very nearly of a height, Loki being taller and the strange man wider across the shoulders. “Ah, welcome, then.”

“What is that music on the ray-doe?” Loki asks.

The man grins, and Loki adds ‘perfect teeth’ to his new and thus far entirely superficial mental book of facts about him. “It’s the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Good art music. Well, at least when you’re aiming for a happy art piece. Liked it enough to follow it here from outer space by way of a little thread, huh? Boy, Mr. Miller has a lot of fans, in the service and back home, but you beat them all by a mile. A million miles, even.” The man taps his foot in time to the new song on the ray-doe and asks with straightforward, honest curiosity, still smiling a bit, “So who are you?”

“I’m – hmm.” Loki takes a step back, straightens his spine and squares his shoulders. If this odd man doesn’t believe him, then at least he’ll have said it well. “I am Loki Laufeyson. Or Loki Laufeyjarson. I haven’t figured out which one’s the right name yet. I am called Loki Silvertongue, Loki Liesmith, God of Mischief and Tricksters –” _‘God of Ergi, though no one is bold enough to say so to my face’_ “– the widower of Angrboda, who bore me Jormungandr, Fenrir, and Hel before her death at the hands of the Æsir, who called our children monstrous and stole them from my arms as they wept for their mother, the parent of Sleipnir, who Odin Allfather keeps in a stable and has trained to the bit and bridle like a simple beast. I was once to marry the ásynjur Sigyn, though Ragnarok will come before she’ll have me now, thanks to my clever, _clever_ schemes. I am the Jotunn who knew it not, a cuckoo in the royal nest of Asgard, kinslayer and killer of Laufey, king of the frost giants of Jotunheim, God of Falling off Bridges and into Empty Space, and apparently the designated villain in both Jotunheim and Asgard, again thanks to my _very_ clever schemes, and believe me, the position is well-deserved.”

The man blinks. The blink turns into a gentle, easygoing smile that Loki scrutinizes for any sign of judgment or disgust or pity, for he’ll beat his strange host bloody if he sees so much as a hint of either. But the smile is what it is, as true and uncomplicated as his question, and Loki allows himself to relax just a hair.

“Wow,” the man says. “Jeez, and I thought my life was interesting. Guess it’s all relative, isn’t it? Alright, then. I’m Steve Rogers, artist by hobby and army captain by employment, Depression orphan, high school graduate by the skin of my teeth, and a former ninety pound weakling with too much brain and mouth and not nearly enough muscle to back it up. I’m a United States government lab experiment to create the perfect soldier, I was the leader of one hell of a unit called the Howling Commandos – I’m pretty sure the name’s Dum Dum’s fault somehow, so don’t go looking sideways at me over that one – I’ve lost good men, I’ve killed men the brass said were bad, I can’t get drunk no matter how much I put back, I’ve never danced, and I’m four and a half months late for my first date with a very classy woman who’s as good a shot as I am. I know I already said it, but welcome to my head.”

Steve grins at Loki, and Loki is helpless to do anything but smile back in sheer relief at this friendly, paint-spattered man, this man who took Loki’s name, his titles, his children, his best and worst deeds, and accepted them with no more than a smile. Loki’s not sure he even knows how to leave Steve’s mind, and in all honesty, he doubts he’ll even bother to give it a try. He knows what bitter reception awaits him on Asgard, and he loathes the Jotnar as much – more, even – than they must surely hate him for his base trickery and assassination of their king, his – his parent, for lack of decisive evidence in either direction. It is the same sickening, stomach-churning mixture of fear and hatred that he felt the first time he saw his true self, his Jotunn self, in a mirror in his quarters on Asgard. He’s the monster that parents warn their children about on Asgard. He’s the creature that _Odin_ and _Frigg_ told terrifying bedtime stories about to him and Thor. He would give all the riches in all the realms for an honest look into their thoughts as they taught their young son to be wary of his home realm, see only the worst in his people, and loathe himself above all with their daring tales of hard-won and bloody victory over the ‘savage’ and ‘barbaric’ frost giants. _‘An accident, surely it was an accident, my par – Odin is too wise and Frigg too kind for them to have made me so on purpose. They wouldn’t; surely they loved me a little, just a little, before I ruined it all?’_

No, Loki thinks Steve Rogers’ mind makes a very nice retreat from the hard and unforgiving worlds that await him outside. He’s on the verge of asking if he can stay, the words on the tip of his tongue, when Steve speaks.

“So,” Steve says, bouncing just a bit on the balls of his feet, “Feel like sticking around for lunch? I make a great sandwich.”

And there’s another reason he should stay – and he’ll wonder over this just as much as he’ll wonder over taking Steve at his word, as altruism is not his strong suit – it’s been a bare ten minutes and already Loki can tell that Steve is starved for company, for someone to listen to besides the ray-doe and his own voice, someone as real as he is. Loki is starved for company he need not impress, fear, love, hate, envy, mistrust, be on his guard around, beg for scraps of affection and respect from and get some of the former and none of the latter, company that will take him as he is and not find him wanting in any way. This is beyond serendipitous. Something so unlikely happening to the both of them, and to displace Loki almost seventy years out of time, can only be the work of beings even greater than Odin. The Norns, perhaps?

It matters not. He is here now, and here he shall stay until asked to leave, for though he is apparently a disembodied god, he remains a god nevertheless, and this marvelous, impossible mortal, this Steve Rogers, who can destroy on the plains of combat with one hand and still create works of art untainted by a jaded eye with the other, has taken him graciously into his home, into his very mind, has offered him sustenance and a friendly smile and has not judged him, and he will not see this man come to harm. If he has sworn his loyalty to another god, or if another god has claimed him as theirs, they’ll have to step aside or they’ll simply have to learn to share with Loki Laufeyson, or Laufeyjarson, God of Protecting Captain Steve Rogers’ Mind. He will stay, and he will allow himself to lick his wounds in private just once, and he will forget about the broken Bifrost and how he lost everything through his own desperate and pointless machinations. He will stay, and he will heal.

Loki smiles. “Thank you. I’d love one.” He follows Steve back down the hall, watching those expressive hands move as he describes in great detail what goes into this dish called a sandwich, waits outside the open bathroom as Steve goes to scrub his hands clean, and when Steve apparently sees the charcoal smear on his face he laughs like it’s the best joke he’s heard in a decade, and Loki finds that he’s capable of laughing as well and knows, _‘This time, this time I’m making the right choice.’_


	2. Inside: Ice Cream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Steve having encountered a god before meeting Loki comes from this excellent prompt at the Avengers kink meme: http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/5102.html?thread=4920046#t4920046. It fills next to none of the requirements on the prompt, but the idea was just too cool to pass by, so I doff my cap to the anon who posted that prompt and thank them for sharing such a great idea.

It isn’t until several days later that Loki thinks to ask how Steve took Loki’s identity in stride. He brings the question up as they’re walking back to the house from the grocery store, Steve in moderately paint-free clothing, Loki in new Midgardian wear for summer months from an empty store on Fulton called Loeser’s that they’d gone to on Loki’s third day, the both of them carrying a bag apiece and swapping a rapidly melting carton of the richest chocolate ice cream imaginable back and forth as they take turns digging at its contents with a shared spoon.

“And I got the tar beat out of me in that field a couple times after school,” Steve says, pointing with the spoon to a weedy field behind a diner. “But that alley there, Bucky and I played kick the can a whole lot growing up, especially after Mom died and I ended up at the orphanage with him. Sometimes we’d even skip school when we were older to hang out around here, but that wasn’t so much about kick the can as it was about Bucky bumming smokes and flirting with the dames while I tagged along and wished I was half as cool as he was.”

Loki steals the spoon and helps himself to a heaping, dripping mouthful. “Whyever were you not? You do strike me as one of the finer examples of humankind, and I’m not speaking solely of your physique, but of what lies beneath, in that warm heart and talented mind of yours.”

Steve ducks his head and smiles bashfully at the cracked cement of the sidewalk beneath their feet. “What, you forgot about the ‘former ninety-pound weakling’ part already? Being a scrawny, artistic kid too quick on the draw with a comeback for his own good in Brooklyn during the Depression wasn’t something that most folks would actively choose to be if they were given an option.”

“Then that is their loss,” Loki says. “And you’re right; I had forgotten. It’s a difficult image to reconcile with the man by my side right now.” He shoots Steve a quicksilver smile and adds, “Make sure that doesn’t go beyond the two of us.”

“What, you forgetting?” Steve steals the spoon back and scoops up a messy spoonful of ice cream, popping it in his mouth and raising his eyebrows at Loki.

“Exactly. I’m a god. Gods don’t forget things. At least, that’s the impression we try to make on our worshippers. We’re perfect and all-powerful and make no mistakes and oh, by the way, we remember when your great-great-great-great-great grandfather and his friends were deep in their cups one night and mocked us, and therefore we will not be answering your call for aid in battle,” Loki says airily, pleased when this startles a laugh out of Steve. “Speaking of which, you were, well, remarkably calm, to put it mildly, about having a god suddenly appear in your house. Was it all just another day in the life of Steve Rogers? Please tell me I’m your first god. I’d hate for that not to be the case.”

“I’m living in my dream house in the middle of a fake, unpopulated version of Brooklyn inside my head while the rest of my body is frozen somewhere in the Arctic,” Steve tells him dryly. “I threw out any yardstick for measuring ‘normal’ a while back. But on top of that, when I was fighting in the war, my team and I were stationed in Europe fighting the Nazis. Their leader, their Führer, Hitler, he was obsessed with Norse gods and the mythology. So was the head of his weapons and science division. I saw enough crazy stuff in those HYDRA bases to be open to the idea that maybe they weren’t just chasing fairy tales. We had bullets in our guns. They had weapons that shot blue light that could vaporize a man where he stood. I did a little reading on the pantheon in question out of curiosity.”

“Oh, for – _that_ war,” Loki says disgustedly. “Centuries of near silence from Midgard, and then that low, wretched puke started trying to get our attention. It was too bad that Odin had already decreed that we weren’t to interfere in mortal conflicts. Thor and – that is, I had come up with plenty of excellent ideas for how to let that vile creature know that we had indeed noticed him. It was a glad day on Asgard when the ‘Allies’ won.”

“ _That_ war? What do you mean, _that_ war?” Steve stopped dead in the street, heedless of the ice cream running down his hand and wrist to drop in fat chocolate splotches on the cement below. “There’s only the one war going on, right?”

Oh, damn it all. A fine job he was doing protecting Steve’s mind, letting a thing like that slip without explanation or context. His host’s unshakeable calm seemed to be shaken up, down, sideways, and halfway to Niflheim.

“Give me that,” Loki says, tugging the drippy ice cream carton from Steve’s hand and using the quickest flash of Jotunn magic to harden and chill its contents again. “Yes, there’s only one war going on. I’m certain that it’s the time period you say it is. I’m just suffering from a mild case of temporal displacement.”

Steve shakes his head a little and looks at Loki, equilibrium not quite restored, but no longer looking like he’s suffering from an emotional earthquake. “And when you say ‘mild’, you mean….”

Loki sighs and sits on the sidewalk, letting his feet dangle off and into the street. “Sit,” he tells Steve, and it comes out sounding more like a request than an order.

Steve joins him in sprawling out across the cement, crossing his feet at the ankles and leaning back onto his elbows until he’s one long and well-built line lounging perfectly perpendicular to what must be, in the real Brooklyn, a very busy street. He gives Loki an expectant look, and Loki takes his bag of groceries and exchanges them for the freshly cold ice cream and spoon. He gives the perishables in their bags a brief brush with icy blue fingertips, shakes off the small amount of frost giant form he allowed himself to wear, and stops putting off telling Steve the news.

“The last time I was on Midgard, it was relatively early in the twenty-first century,” he says. “Two Thousand Eleven, I believe. I wasn’t there for long. It was a place some twenty leagues outside a little town in the southwest of your country, very dusty. I much prefer this Brooklyn of yours.”

“Two Thousand Eleven?” Steve echoes weakly.

“Have some ice cream,” Loki advises. “You’ll feel better.” At Steve’s incredulous look, he says defensively, “Eating always makes Volstagg feel better. Sorry, I’m not very good at comforting people. If you need me to talk you into doing anything ridiculous, stupid, or reckless, then I’m the god you want. Comfort is something people on Asgard usually need after they’ve run afoul of one of my tricks, managed to get on my bad side, or, best of all, happened to look like a good target and I felt like being a bit naughty that day.”

“Uh…huh.” Steve looks from Loki to the carton and back, carefully shovels up a giant spoonful of ice cream, and shoves the whole thing in his mouth, making slow, exaggerated gestures throughout the process.

“Cheeky!” Loki exclaims. “You’re cheeking a god! You’re in dangerous territory, Captain Rogers.”

“Mmf,” Steve mumbles around the mass of chocolate ice cream in his mouth. He swallows and tries again. “So tell my great-great-great-great-great grandson that you won’t help him with his schoolwork because of that one time I was cheeky with the ice cream. That is, if you don’t forget.”

It’s Steve’s turn to surprise a laugh out of Loki, but privately, Loki claims the victory for himself. He did that; he made his mortal smile and joke in the face of a sixty-six year leap of time between the present that Loki was pulled from and the present that they’re occupying together. He, Loki, did a good thing, and the only thing he got out of it was a happier Steve. Others in the realms outside of this empty Brooklyn of Steve’s may disagree, but he’s not a monster here, nor a villain, nor even a god in the strictest sense, seeing how Steve treats with him as he would an equal.

“Are there flying cars?” Steve asks abruptly. “Howard – at the Expo, Howard Stark said we’d all be driving flying cars in a few years.”

“No, no flying cars,” Loki tells him. “I hope you didn’t have your heart set on owning one.”

“Not really,” Steve says. “Brooklyn’s in my blood and New York City’s in my bones. You can get where you want faster and cheaper, most of the time, if you _don’t_ drive there. Say, did you ever pay any attention to the United States when you were off in Asgard? Is the military integrated in the future? How about segregation – that’s over, right? Are there a lot of women in Congress? Is there one on the Supreme Court yet? How about –”

“Slow down,” Loki says, laughing. “No, I didn’t devote a great deal of time to watching your country. That duty belongs to Heimdall. He sees all and hears all, in every realm, everywhere. Me, I just get curious every so often. Now, why such interest in seeing the righting of wrongs and undoing of inequalities? I don’t need to make a study of your United States of America to know that you, Steve Rogers, white, male, classically handsome and quite masculine, a surname from the British Isles…doors are wide open for you simply on those qualities alone. Why care about the people who don’t have those opportunities?”

“Because they should have them,” Steve says, as if the answer should be obvious, and he rises in Loki’s estimation yet again. “Because we always call this place – not this place, but the real U.S.A. – the land of opportunity, and it is, but only for some people, and if you’re not one of them you’re either out of luck or you have to lie and hide and deny a part of yourself, like a grandparent who’s the wrong color, or your religion, or something else that’s just as important, in order to get a foot in one of those doors. And when I promised I’d defend the nation and her people, I wasn’t just swearing to defend _some_ of them. I meant all of them.”

“I’m very glad it’s your mind I’m in, my friend, and not someone else’s,” Loki says with sincerity that his – that Thor had once claimed him incapable of speaking. An odd word choice stuck out in his mind, and he had to comment. “‘Her’ people?”

Steve looks at him with bright, guileless eyes and an innocent expression that might fool others, but barely passed muster as far as the God of Mischief and Tricksters was concerned. “Did I forget to mention that you’re not my first god?”

Loki groans theatrically and yanks both ice cream carton and spoon from Steve’s hands. “No! Someone got to you before I did? That’s just unfair! How cruel and unjust is this world? You’re _my_ human. Pray, tell me who this Steve-stealing god is?”

“I don’t know her name,” Steve says, and there’s a faint reverence in the way he speaks of her that makes Loki wonder what his name would sound like on Steve’s lips in that particular tone of voice. “But she…she’s the country, Loki, the land and the water and the sky. She’s earth and nature and weather and humanity. When I was in the lab and they were doing the experimental procedure to turn me from a scrawny, sickly runt into their super soldier ideal, she appeared to me, and asked me to be her champion, to serve and defend the nation and its people. She didn’t say anything about an exchange of favors, and I was fine with that, since I was ready to give her my loyalty as soon as she spoke, but I sometimes felt, when a situation got dicey and it looked like things might go south, that she was keeping an eye on me and making sure I stayed safe.”

“That would go a ways toward explaining your current circumstance,” Loki says thoughtfully.

“Yeah, I’d figured that much,” Steve says. “It was pretty lonely until you showed up, but it sure beat being dead, and I’m more than grateful for that. If she had a hand in you ending up here instead of somewhere else, then, well, I’m lost for words to describe how damn thankful I am.”

“Pretty lonely?” Loki asks, echoing Steve.

“I like quiet,” Steve says, swiping the spoon from Loki and making a play for the ice cream, “But there’s such a thing as too quiet. It was too quiet, and it was getting to be too quiet for too long.”

Loki tauntingly holds the carton out of reach for a few seconds to indulge in the amusing sight of watching Steve try to capture it without sitting up. When it begins to look like Steve might start attacking him with the spoon rather than going after the ice cream, he hands it over and says, “I always had the opposite problem. There are hundreds of people in the palace on Asgard, and they’re forever talking, or more likely bellowing at each other, as proper Asgardian warriors do, and there was never anywhere to avoid them but my chambers and the library. Every once in a while I’d be intolerably mean to a few people in the morning, and by noon word would have inevitably spread that I was to be avoided at all costs that day.”

“That’s one way of handling it,” Steve says.

“If there’s anything you really need to understand about the Æsir, it’s that strength and prowess in combat are highly prized in men and boys, whereas magic, tricks, and cleverness….” Loki gave him a speaking look. “I fit very poorly into the society in which I was raised. Allowing myself a little rudeness from time to time was an excellent way to release frustration.”

“I wasn’t judging,” Steve says. “It just surprised me a little, you being mean, I mean. You haven’t been mean at all. I think you’re a pretty swell guy.”

“And _you_ , thank the Norns, are refreshingly nothing like the Æsir, the Vanir, or even Midgard’s Vikings, even if you are a formidable warrior,” Loki returns. “Now, there’s something I simply must know, Steve Rogers, so tell me truly. You are your goddess’s champion. When I asked Heimdall about this war of yours once, he described a soldier unlike any other who struck fear into the hearts of his Nazi foes, one who was stronger and faster than his compatriots, who wore unusual garb and went by a title rather than a name.”

“The uniform and the shield are in the attic,” Steve tells him, laughing a little and humming a few bars of a song.

“You’re this soldier, then?” Loki asks, laughing as well.

“Captain America, the Star-Spangled Man,” Steve says, and he somehow manages to sound both self-deprecating and proud at the same time.

“When Heimdall told me of your uniform, I thought the mask sounded a little silly,” Loki says.

“Remind me to put it on and show it to you sometime,” Steve says, lying flat on his back and shielding his face from the afternoon sun with a forearm across his eyes. “Then you can laugh at me in my silly mask in person.”

Loki collapses as well, grinning widely up at the sky. “I’ll remember to do that.”

“Of course you will.”

“Of course. Gods never forget.”

“No, never.”

“…Are you done with the ice cream?”

“Help yourself.”


	3. Inside: Fireworks

The Fourth of July arrived, and with it, a previously undisclosed interest in singing on Steve’s part. From what Loki could gather, it was Independence Day, one of Steve’s patron goddess’s most high holy days, and her champion was doing his duty – loudly, and reasonably well – by singing patriotic songs praising his country of origin. It was also the twenty-fifth anniversary of his birth, and as this was yet another cause for celebration, the day had passed with Steve in a happy, scatterbrained haze, the music from the radio ( _not_ , as it turned out, the ray-doe) turned up high and providing instrumental backup to Steve’s sonorous anthems. Loki had peered in on him a few times while he was in the studio only to see his friend send globs of bright color flying off the end of his paintbrush as he attacked his canvas with even more enthusiasm than usual. Each time Loki decided that caution was the better part of valor and retreated back down the stairs to the living room, snickering, to add more words to one of the hundreds of empty books on the shelves that he’d tasked himself with filling.

He’s in the middle of writing out a tale he heard told at an inn on Midgard in late 14th century Ireland, safely free from any reference to anything related to Asgard, when Steve rushes down the steps and into the living room, holding the still-drying painting aloft.

“Behold,” Steve says, brandishing the wet canvas. “Fireworks!”

Loki caps his pen and carefully sets it and the book to one side, rising from the sofa to get a better look at Steve’s painting. The background is a rich, dark blue, bordering on purple near the horizon, only a shade or two lighter than the sky outside. In the foreground is a park bench; two young lovers viewed from the back sit side by side, their heads tipped together and the youth’s arm wrapped around his sweetheart’s slender shoulders. Up in that blue-black sky are what Steve must mean when he says ‘fireworks’ with such a spark of excitement in his eyes, riotous bursts of reds and greens, yellows and blues, purples and whites, explosions high above that turn to starbursts and pinwheels and waterfalls.

“So those are fireworks,” Loki says. “They’re lovely. I’d quite enjoy seeing them in person.”

“They’re the best part of my birthday,” Steve tells him, leaning the stretched canvas frame against the fireplace so that the paint doesn’t touch the wood floor. “Every night, I’d go find the best place to see them that I could, and it was like getting a birthday present from the city. Hearing the crack of the explosions, smelling the smoke, staring up so hard I could still see them on the inside of my eyelids when I shut my eyes…definitely the best part of my birthday.”

Loki finds himself filled with a determination that this won’t be Steve’s first birthday without fireworks at night. “Shall we go outside?” he asks. “We’re not likely to see them through the ceiling, you know.”

Steve favors him with a delighted smile, and Loki once again makes a comparison in the privacy of his own thoughts between Thor and Steve. Both are so very like the sun, but where Thor is sometimes too bright to look at, and too hot-tempered, occasionally burning those who come within his orbit, Steve is – Steve is warmth, and a steady glow that lights up whatever room he steps into. He attempts to quash the thought – he is too cynical, too world-weary, for such soft and mawkish sentiment – but it’s no use. There is a new sun to Loki’s moon now, and one thousand and forty-six years of being silver-tongued Loki in the shadow of golden Thor have been rewritten in only a few short months, and by a mortal, no less.

“I’d like that,” Steve says, and he follows Loki out of the living room, through the dining room and kitchen, where Loki makes a quick stop to grab a bowl of ripe cherries, and into the sprawling back yard.

Loki settles tailor-style onto the lawn, bowl of cherries in his lap. Steve lies down beside him, arms and legs splayed out at his sides like an overgrown starfish. He holds out a handful of the deep red fruit to Steve, and Steve takes them from him absently, popping one in his mouth and dropping the rest onto his stomach. The cherry is soon followed by the stem, and Loki watches curiously as Steve’s jaw works at it until he opens his mouth again and pulls out the stem with a flourish, showing Loki the neatly tied knot in the center with a triumphant grin.

“Ha! I knew I could still do it,” Steve says. “Think you can?” Before Loki can answer, he amends his question. “Without magic?”

“Of course I can,” Loki says loftily, and he pulls a stem from one of the cherries and sticks it in his mouth, feeling for the ends with the tip of his tongue and bending it this way and that, pinning one end between his teeth and doing his best to coax it into a loop and thread the other end through it. From the amused look on Steve’s face, he is only too aware of the strange expressions he’s making as he attempts to tie the knot without resorting to magic. When Steve starts laughing at him, Loki spits out the mangled, knot-free stem into his hand and mock-glares at it. “You make that look deceptively easy.”

“It takes practice,” Steve tells him. “Bucky showed me how when we finished high school, and I didn’t get the hang of it until around the time I got my One-A status and shipped off for training. I was twenty then.”

“When I was twenty years old, I still had yet to learn to crawl,” Loki says. “That is one advantage that you humans have over us. You learn things so much faster. Necessity would make that the case, of course, given how like fireflies mortal lives are. Brief, bright, and then over, just like that.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. “Just like fireflies.” There’s a low note of melancholy to his words.

“That is not to say that I will abandon you when you’re old and gray,” Loki hastens to reassure him. “Nor will I forget your friendship after you are gone. I do not value you less for your shorter lifespan.”

“Loki,” Steve says, and trails off, fiddling with the small pile of cherries on his stomach. “I’m not going to get any older. Before the procedure, Doctor Erskine said that might be a side effect of the serum. After the whole mess in Austria happened and we were back in Italy with the 107th, and the Strategic Science Reserve took over giving the orders to my new team and me, Howard took a few blood samples and ran a whole bunch of tests that all said pretty much the same thing. I can die. I just can’t age.”

Loki studies Steve’s face, noting the faint downward twist of his lips and the tightness around his eyes. “This bothers you,” he states.

“Watching the world go by, people my age getting old, retiring, dying, their kids, their grandkids, their _great_ -grandkids doing the same? Yeah, it bothers me. I know it’s not real immortality, but I still don’t think I’m cut out for it,” Steve says. “Last time you were on Earth, in the future, everyone from my time had probably already…passed. But I’d still look exactly the same around seventy years from now even if I hadn’t needed to crash the plane, and ended up turned into an ice cube. It’s a depressing thought, especially on my birthday, but you’re right. People, normal people, their lives go by just like _that_. As for me, I don’t really do a good firefly impression these days.”

“Not even the gods are truly immortal,” Loki says, “Although I’ll thank you to keep that bit of information to yourself.” He waits until Steve meets his eyes, and asks, “How old do you think I am? No, how old do I appear to be?”

“Around twenty-six or twenty-seven, but I know you’re older than that,” Steve says. “Why?”

“I’m over one thousand years old,” Loki says. “For every two score years or so, I grow perhaps a year older by Midgard’s standards, and I am young enough yet to not need to eat of Idunn’s apples. And while I do recognize your sorrow at your situation, I have to admit that I’m glad of it – not of your sorrow, but of your eternal youth. I am not known for being nice or altruistic; I do not make friends easily, Steve Rogers, nor do I extend my hand in friendship lightly. Knowing that you won’t be lost to old age, that I will look about myself in another thousand years and see my friend still walking with me, is cause enough for celebration as far as I’m concerned. Call me selfish if you like. That is simply how I see it.”

Steve looks at him seriously for a long moment, and Loki doesn’t look away. He’ll not apologize for how he feels about the thought of Steve having the potential to be as long-lived as the Æsir and Vanir – as long-lived as the Jotnar.

The barest hint of a smile crosses Steve’s face, reaching his eyes and washing away the tension in their corners. “The fireworks will probably start soon.”

“Ah, yes, the fireworks,” Loki says, pleased to leave such heavy conversation behind them. “Any minute now.”

He joins Steve in looking up at the dark sky, fingers itching in readiness to attempt to produce the fireworks should they not appear on their own. He’ll give them a minute and no longer. Fifty seconds. Forty. Thirty. Twenty. Ten…nine…eight….

He raises his hand to shoot off the first illusion when a high, shrill whistle fills the air, accompanied by the sight of a blazing red fistful of light shooting up into the sky, higher, higher, and then a mighty _crack_ is heard as that little fistful of red explodes outward into a crackling, wild star far above their heads. _‘Magnificent.’_ Humans really were quite ingenious in their own way. They might not have the shining roads or tall, glimmering gold buildings of Asgard, but Asgard doesn’t have fireworks.

“You’ll get a crick in your neck watching like that,” Steve says, and he wraps a broad hand around the wrist of Loki’s upraised arm and tugs him gently down to lie in the long grass beside him. His hand lingers for just a second before giving Loki’s wrist a soft squeeze. “Thank you.”

Loki’s not sure what he’s being thanked for, but the warmth of Steve’s hand has sunk into his skin and there’s a band of pleasant heat everywhere that Steve’s palm and fingers touched him. He wants to rub it away, or perhaps to rub it more firmly in, to say ‘you’re welcome’ or to return the touch of hand to wrist in kind, to get up and seek solitude and think on this, to lay here on the lawn in Steve’s company and not think at all –

He eats a cherry, staring hard up at the fireworks so that he too might see them when he closes his eyes as Steve does, and reflects that he really should have known that it was possible for him to land himself in trouble without being ‘evil’. At least it’s not his fault this time. He played no part in making his friend so very, very attractive.


	4. Inside: Anniversary

The year slips by much like the first few months did, with Steve at his art and Loki at his books, afternoons filled with long, rambling walks and long, rambling talks down ghost-quiet streets, silent nights beneath the sunset quilt on either side of the massive bed they chastely share, morning upon morning of Loki stumbling sleepily down the stairs to the kitchen to find breakfast ready and waiting, Steve at the table with a smile and a teasing admonition that eventually he’ll have to learn how to cook, too. 

They no longer celebrate only the holy days of Steve’s country and patron goddess. There are constant celebrations: The Day Steve Ran Out of Cobalt Blue Paint is celebrated with a trip to an art supply store to make off with every shade of blue oil paint on the shelves; The Day the Apples All Ripened Overnight is worth a twofold celebration of food and games – two apple pies, an apple cobbler, applesauce with cinnamon, and a lengthy walk to Ebbets Field toting bats and a large bin of apples, where they play a wild and most certainly non-regulation game of ‘baseball’ until all the apples are just pulp and seeds and they’re both sticky and dripping with juice and laughing like madmen; The Day that Loki Wrote a Story Insulting Everyone He Knew in the Tradition of the Skalds merits a dramatic reading and a dozen little sketches illustrating the most memorable of the insults. On Halloween, which Loki remembers as All-Hallows’ Even from an unsupervised trip to England in the 16th century, they carve pumpkins and roast the seeds, Steve telling Loki of Halloween celebrations from his youth and childhood and Loki telling Steve some of the more disturbing tales of the dead and the supernatural that he knows. Yule finds them huddled as close to the fireplace as they dare to get after a wild and energetic snowball fight in the back yard.

Loki still pulls pranks every so often, just to keep his hand in. Little things, like turning the rice green and the milk purple, putting an illusion on the watercolor paints so that none of them appeared in the tray as they did on paper, and sending knee-high versions of Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogun trailing after Steve for a day, Volstagg moaning about how empty his stomach is, Fandral flirting with Steve’s kneecaps, and Hogun glowering in dour disapproval of his counterparts’ poor manners. Steve thinks there’s nothing funnier, calling Loki’s magic ‘amazing’ and his pranks ‘keen’. Loki tries not to think on how things might have been different if he’d only had a friend like Steve on Asgard as he grew up. The past cannot be changed, and Loki is Loki, though when it’s quiet and he’s alone he’s secretly alarmed by the way his tricks lack a vicious edge or an insulting sting to them, and wonders if he’s going as soft as he once accused Thor of doing after his return from Midgard. Loki was soft once, and he learned the hard way to hone his silver tongue to a knife’s edge, to cover his weak spots with an icy armor of indifference. His time here may prove to be his undoing, as he’s shed his armor and thrown his whetstone over his shoulder already, and if anything should change, if Steve should find him lacking someday, should he grow tired of his company – Loki walks without armor and carries no weapon. His mortal-who-isn’t-a-mortal could finish what Asgard came so close to doing. He could break him.

It’s a very good thing that Steve would rather mend than break. Steve knows little of Loki’s life beyond the bare bones, but Loki has an unshakeable feeling that, were he to share more of the sordid and ugly pieces of his past, his friend would simply nod and put the kettle on and share some of his own dark, painful memories to balance the scales. He has had precious few people in his life that he has called friend, and his reasons for such choosiness changed constantly the older he grew. Now, he finds that the one man in this empty, empty dream realm is a friend of unsurpassed quality, and Loki –

May the Norns help him, but he trusts him. And he hopes that he is half the friend to Steve that Steve is to him.

That hope is the reason why, after sliding out of bed mid-January and padding down the stairs in his socks and sleepwear to find an empty dining room and a kitchen bearing no evidence of Steve save for the box of Cherrioats left open on the counter, he decides that breakfast can wait and turns on his heel to go right back upstairs to the only place Steve could possibly be.

Loki finds Steve up in the studio staring at his calendar on the wall, a pot of white paint in one hand and a brush in the other. It takes but a second to see why Steve went missing this morning. Every day on Steve’s beautifully rendered calendar has an ‘X’ through it. He’s come full circle, all the way back to the day he crashed.

“They haven’t found me yet,” Steve says calmly, sounding almost unnervingly detached from the words he’s speaking. “They probably won’t, will they?”

_‘Yes,’_ Loki wants to say, _‘Of course they will.’_ But he’s not an optimist, and he’s no good at comfort, and he refuses to let Thor’s half-jesting accusation – _“You’re incapable of sincerity”_ – be true when it comes to his friend.

“When you did your reading up on the gods of Asgard, did you ever come across a certain tale about Thor, the mighty and ever so manly God of Thunder, cross-dressing as Freyja, the comely and incredibly feminine Goddess of Love, in order to trick a frost giant into returning his hammer?” he says instead as he selects a paintbrush for himself.

“Are you trying to cheer me up, or are you trying to distract me?” Steve asks.

“Yes,” Loki says, dipping his brush into the paint and neatly whiting out the first of May. “Now, Thor, being the adventurous type that he is, went on a trip to Svártalfaheim with his friends Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun, and Sif, and I, having plenty of better things to do with my time but none that would prove a convincing argument for staying home against the will of five determined warriors, reluctantly joined their merry little band as well. We were young then; Thor and his friends were around eight hundred and fifty, and I had just passed my eight hundred and sixth birthday. Thor had only recently been gifted with the hammer Mjolnir, having had it for little more than a century, and was still much enamored with it, touching it constantly, bringing it out to wave around just because he felt like doing so, boasting loudly in public that he, Thor Odinson, wielded this weapon of great power, and all in the hopes that those around might see and be filled with admiration. Well, in the first inn we stopped at on Svártalfaheim, Mjolnir was indeed noticed, and had Thor had even a thimbleful of logic to his name, he would have seen what was coming.” He finishes the row and asks, “Would you know more?”

Steve shakes his head, stops, and shrugs. “I guess so.” He begins to paint over the crossed out days on the top row at the other end, starting with the first Saturday of April.

“Good. Thor’s plans for the trip involved, mead, hunting, and possibly a good fight or two. Mine involved finding someone intelligent enough to hold a decent conversation without needing to resort to using smaller words to get my thoughts across. Aside from Thor, Volstagg, and Fandral drinking a full barrel of mead down to the dregs, neither of us got what we wanted. You see, Thor was most especially Thor-like that evening, and Mjolnir again put in an appearance at the table while he spoke proudly – and quite drunkenly – of how his prowess in combat had greatly improved since Mjolnir had become his. Most unfortunately, a few seats over, a Jotunn, a frost giant, was listening closely to Thor’s bragging and eyeing the hammer most covetously. I attempted to give warning, to counsel discretion and caution, but –” 

Loki gestures at the space behind him and conjures up a waist-high apparition of a younger, drunker ‘Thor’, who sways on his feet and roars, “Silence, Loki, the warriors are talking!”

Something that sounds suspiciously like a smothered snicker comes from Steve’s side of the calendar.

“I should have realized that would be his answer, obviously,” Loki says as he continues to paint. “Discretion and caution are my watchwords, not his. I can hardly be blamed for simply shaking my head and sighing at his foolishness. I will admit, however, that I had a very difficult time biting my tongue and not saying ‘I told you so’ the next morning, when we woke from our slumber at the inn to discover that someone had made off with Mjolnir in the middle of the night.” The miniature Thor looks about in bafflement as his hammer disappears from his hand with a noisy pop. “Thor dreaded going back to Asgard to face Odin Allfather without Mjolnir, so I again spoke up, suggesting that rather than return to the palace, we go to Freyja’s hall in Fólkvangr instead, where one of us could borrow her cloak of feathers and fly through the realms in search of the thief. This, unlike the suggestion of prudence and lowering his voice, was very well received by Thor, as it apparently sounded enough like a proper adventure to him to merit following my advice for once.”

A third flick of his fingers brings equally small copies of lovely chestnut-haired ‘Freyja’ and a ‘Loki’ not long out of adolescence into being. “Freyja, while sympathetic, refused to let Thor wear her cloak, pointing out quite rightly that if Thor had mislaid his own most precious possession, how could she entrust one of her own priceless belongings into his hands?” The ‘Freyja’ simulacrum shakes her finger at ‘Thor’, who pouts and glowers at the floor. “Nor would she entrust it to Sif or the Warriors Three, again saying rightly that their victories in battle didn’t lend themselves well to subterfuge and espionage. This left only one person she felt was suited for the job: me, Loki Silvertongue.” ‘Freyja’ hands a long feathered cloak to the false ‘Loki’, and both of the Lokis in the room smirk. “I sometimes wonder if she made that choice simply to tweak Thor’s nose. She is several centuries my elder, but she is a seidkona, a seid woman, and had a soft spot for me, as there are precious few magic wielders on Asgard, and we had done each other favors before, of the kind that can only result in a friendship of sorts.

“I threw the cloak about my shoulders and flew to Jotunheim, swifter than a hawk at hunt and as silent as an owl. It did not take me long to find the thief, as he was sitting alone on a burial mound and looking unbearably smug.” A robin’s egg blue Jotunn clad in a furry knee-length waist wrap and roughly cobbled sheepskin boots joins the assembly of small characters in the studio. “I landed to have words with him and found that he had good reason to be smug, as he was much better prepared than any of us had anticipated. Thrym was his name, and well-named he was, for his words caused quite the uproar when I flew back to Fólkvangr to deliver the news. Thrym had buried Mjolnir deep within the earth, and its exact location would remain a secret unless Freyja came to Jotunheim to be his bride.”

“Again?” ‘Freyja’ cries in exasperation.

Steve doesn’t even attempt to stifle his snort of laughter at that. “This wasn’t the first time?”

“Oh, no,” Loki says. “Demanding Freyja’s hand in marriage was almost commonplace. This wasn’t even the first Jotunn to do so. It had become something of a sore spot with Freyja by then, so when I told her, Thor, and his warrior friends the news, Thor’s reaction made her quite angry.”

“Freyja,” Thor ‘says’ imperiously, “Dress yourself for a wedding and put on a bridal head-dress. We’ll leave for Jotunheim at once.”

“How loose do you think my morals are, young Odinson?” ‘Freyja’ snaps. “I’ll not be married off to some conniving Jotunn simply to help you get your hammer back. This is a mess of your making; solve it on your own.”

“Good for her,” Steve says. He’s paying more attention to the half-sized illusions than to the calendar, and Loki hides a smile at his success and continues the tale.

“Thor argued and demanded and even pleaded, but Freyja held firm. It seemed that the matter might have to be taken to the palace and put before Odin and the other Æsir and Vanir at a Thing, but then the unexpected happened. Heimdall, gatekeeper of the Bifrost, had taken note of both the argument and the sticky situation Thor had landed himself in, and left his post to come to Fólkvangr to give his advice on the matter. And it was on that day that I learned that Heimdall does, in fact, possess a sense of humor.”

“It is not a sense of humor, it is foresight,” the newly created miniature ‘Heimdall’ corrects Loki solemnly. “I saw that it would be so, therefore I said my piece and made it so.” With that, ‘Heimdall’ bows with great gravitas and winks out of existence.

“I still maintain that it was due to a very well hidden sense of humor, but in any case, Heimdall’s foresight was perhaps the best thing to happen during that century, at least in my book,” Loki says, “For Heimdall suggested that Thor dress as Freyja in her stead, in a woman’s dress with gems ‘round his neck and keys ‘round his waist, and a bridal veil on his head to disguise his identity.”

“No, no, no, no, no!” shouts ‘Thor’ in horror, waving his arms frantically.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” ‘Freyja’ hisses, a wickedly amused gleam in her eyes. “I have just the dress for you.”

“You’ll recall that I spoke of Thor as being manly,” Loki says, finishing up the month of May and moving on to September, directly below the month wiped clean of ‘X’es. “To say he wasn’t enamored with the idea is to wildly understate the case. He loathed Heimdall’s plan, as any rough, tough, virile warrior would. It ended up taking Freyja and me over a week to talk sense into him. He wasn’t even much appeased when I said I’d go along as ‘Freyja’s’ handmaid to ensure that things went smoothly.”

“It’s easier for you, Loki,” ‘Thor’ grumbles. “You’re, er – Loki.” 

“It’s far better to be me than to be you at the moment,” the little ‘Loki’ says. “But thank you ever so much for your kind words.” He gestures at himself with a wave of his hand and transforms from ás to ásynjur almost instantly, hair falling to the waist, hips rounding, bosom growing, hard angles softening, trousers becoming shift and tunic becoming dress.

“Convincing disguise,” Steve says with clear admiration.

“Not all of my magic is bound to illusion,” Loki says, allowing himself to preen a little at the complimentary words. His tiny double drops a graceful curtsey. “I’m a shape shifter. That was no mere disguise, my friend. I was as real a woman as Freyja or Sif until I changed back.” He sneaks a sideways look at Steve to see what he makes of that, but his friend simply looks all the more impressed by the admission.

“Thor’s beard was shaved for the ruse, and two of Freyja’s maids altered – drastically altered – a suitable gown to fit him well enough,” Loki continues. “I would have offered my skills as a sorcerer to make him appear as Freyja looked, but he’d been such an insufferably stubborn ass for the past eight days that I decided that the lovely Freyja Njordrsdottir would have to be rather distinctly un-lovely for this ruse, as I had no intention of hiding Thor’s face with anything but a thick veil.” A twitch of a finger, and a tight, ill-fitting gown replaces ‘Thor’s’ armor. He glares at ‘Freyja’ and ‘Loki’ and flips the veil over his face with a loud ‘humph!’ “We had word sent ahead as soon as Thor agreed to the plot, and when we arrived on Jotunheim and made our way to Thrym’s dwelling-place, we discovered that a wedding party was already set up and ready to be underway, with all his relatives in attendance. A feast had been prepared in honor of the upcoming nuptials, and as the bride and her handmaid, Thor and I were invited to sit and join in the repast. In the face of all that food, Thor immediately forgot that he was pretending to be a lovely goddess who lacked a warrior’s appetite, and he ate and drank so much – an entire oxen, if you can believe it, and flagon after flagon of mead – that Thrym said, greatly worried, he hoped he wouldn’t have to feed his bride so much _every_ night.”

‘Loki’ kicks ‘Thor’ on the ankle, hard enough to make him drop the flagon of mead he’s guzzling. “Stop it, you oaf!” she whispers out of the corner of her mouth, then says to Thrym, “Not at all, sir; Freyja has been so eagerly anticipating this union that she hasn’t had a bite to eat in eight days.” ‘Thrym’ heaves a great sigh of relief at that.

“Most fortunately, Thrym was as gullible as the day is long, and he swallowed my thin excuse for Thor’s behavior without question,” Loki says. “ _Less_ fortunately, however, he was so pleased that ‘Freyja’ was looking forward to marrying him that he just had to steal a kiss, and when he lifted the veil and saw Thor’s angry, bloodshot eyes glaring back, he leapt away with a shout of alarm.”

“Her eyes are nearly as red as a Jotunn’s!” ‘Thrym’ cries, pointing to ‘Thor’ with a trembling hand.

‘Loki’ kicks ‘Thor’s’ ankle again. “She’s been so excited the last eight days that she hasn’t had so much as a wink of sleep,” she soothes ‘Thrym’.

“Again, he bought my weak explanation,” Loki says, “Though he was shaken enough that he didn’t try to kiss his bride again. Finally, the feast ended, and Thrym and ‘Freyja’ took their places for the wedding ceremony. Thrym, though he was opportunistic and greedy, was a Jotunn of his word, and the hammer Mjolnir was brought out and set on the table as he prepared to take his bride. Thor, upon seeing his hammer returned, ripped off his veil, grabbed it with both hands, and –” He stops. Oh. He really should have thought about how the plot had ended before he’d begun recounting it.

“And?” Steve asks. “What happens?”

“Thor and I ran out, left Jotunheim immediately, and never saw them again, and Thor learned a valuable lesson on how to keep his mouth shut when it mattered,” Loki says dully, waving a hand at the illusory people and making them vanish. “We all lived happily ever after.”

“You know, I kind of have a feeling that’s not the actual end of the story,” Steve says. “Come on. You’ve successfully distracted me, and I feel a lot better on top of that. So why the long face all of a sudden?”

“I chose the most amusing adventure we’d been on to brighten your spirits, and in remembering my amusement I managed to forget how it ended,” Loki says. “It was funny at the time. Now – of all those assembled at the wedding party, Thor and I were the only two who got that happily ever after, ride off into the sunset in a blaze of glory, sort of ending. Everyone else – Thor killed them. Messily. And it was justified and much deserved, for the Jotnar have always been the enemy of the Æsir, and they are as I said, conniving, opportunistic, and greedy, violent and bloodthirsty and –”

“Don’t,” Steve says quietly. “You aren’t like that.”

Loki closes his eyes as Steve’s words pierce him straight through the heart. He really should remember that his friend is so perceptive. “No? It’s the nature of every Jotunn to be that. To be Jotunn is to be a monster, and I have done monstrous things. I _am_ conniving, I _am_ opportunistic, I _am_ –”

“My friend,” Steve says, interrupting again. “Loki. When…when did you find out?”

“About what I am?” Loki asks. Steve nods. “Nearly eight months ago.”

“And what did you do once you knew?”

_‘I took the throne, lied to Thor and broke his heart, nearly_ killed _Thor, set a trap for and assassinated their king, and attempted to destroy their world.’_ “I’m not – I can’t, not yet. I’m not ready to say.”

_‘I don’t want to see the look on your face when I do.’_

“Well, when you are,” Steve says gently, “You know where to find me.”

“You may have a long wait ahead of you,” Loki says.

Steve smiles slightly. “That’s okay. I don’t think we’re going anywhere anytime soon.” He sets the pot of white paint and his paintbrush down on a rolling cart, plucks the other brush from Loki’s hand and drops it down beside them, and pulls Loki into a strong hug.

Loki’s so stiff with surprise that he just stands there awkwardly for a moment before his mind begins to work again. Cautiously, tentatively, he puts his own arms around Steve, and when his touch is not rejected, he closes his eyes again and leans into him, letting his sturdy body take some of Loki’s weight as he just breathes and remembers the last time he was embraced like this.

Frigg. Right before Thor came back. His mother-not-mother hugging him close after he’d killed Laufey, his maybe-father-maybe-mother-definitely-parent. She had held him tight in relief, for comfort, because –

Because she loved him. She knew what lay under his deceptively fair-skinned appearance, had always known, and she loved him. He had been loved. He had not had Thor’s respect or as much of Odin’s pride as he would have liked, the rest of the Æsir didn’t hold him in the same esteem as they did their warriors, he had suffered devastating losses on Asgard because of circumstances outside of his control, but _he had been loved._ And ever-observant Loki hadn’t even seen that he already had what he was so determined to gain until long after he’d managed to lose it.

If Steve notices Loki’s hitching breaths as he tries to keep bitter tears at bay, he doesn’t say a word. He just holds on, rock-steady and calm and unswerving in his kindness. Even with his chest tight and his eyes stinging, regrets and self-recriminations churning away in his mind, Loki feels safe. Warm. _Cherished_.

Ah. So this is what it feels like to fall in love. Funny. It doesn’t feel like falling at all.

“You are a rare and remarkable man, Steve Rogers,” Loki whispers, and pulls away, giving Steve his best smile as he does. “We should probably finish painting over the days before the brushes dry out.”

They return to painting in comfortable silence. Loki contemplates this new facet of himself as he absently fills in the boxes with crisp white paint, turning it this way and that, examining it closely, learning the size and the feel and heft of it. He doesn’t deserve this bright, beautiful thing, but he can’t imagine letting it go now that it’s his.

He’ll keep it a secret. He’s made of secrets – he has room for another one, tucked up snug against his heart.


	5. Inside: Change

One morning in August, at the height of summer, when the sun sizzles and shoes and long-sleeves are abandoned in favor of bare feet and undershirts, Loki wakes up in the wrong body. It’s too tall, too angular, too hard, too flat. Too many lines and points to it to be correct. Loki sits up, sees that Steve is, as usual, downstairs already, and gets out of bed.

Then she sits right back down on the edge and wonders what to do.

Were she still on Asgard, she would grit her teeth and bear it, walking about in a man’s body – a boy’s body centuries before manhood arrived – and pretending that nothing was wrong, that it didn’t chafe at her constantly, like her very skin and bones didn’t fit right. If she was lucky enough, she could slip away to her quarters for a few hours of sweet solitude, her body the proper shape, nothing dangling between her legs, still wearing a man’s garb and jumping at small noises, ready to turn her body _wrong_ again should someone knock on her door, desperately hoping that Heimdall was looking elsewhere.

She’s not in Asgard, though. She’s in an empty dream realm that she shares with only one other person. There is no rigid culture of masculinity and power here, enforced by stern disapproval, hissing whispers, vicious rumors, palace gossip, and incredulous stares. There are no serving women for a four hundred year old Loki to overhear as she hides behind a pillar: _“So odd; at least his brother isn’t like that, but what else can you expect from a boy up to his ears in sorcery? The next thing we’ll be hearing is that he’s taking up seidr as well! Oh, his poor parents!”_ That isn’t how she’ll find out she’s not right, that there’s something wrong with her, not with the rest of the Æsir, and if she wants to keep studying magic she’ll stop this nonsense and conform, conform, conform. 

She’s older now. Smarter. Maybe even a tiny bit wiser. She’s definitely meaner.

She’s one thousand forty-seven years old and a powerful sorceress and a goddess, damn it, and the idea of going downstairs and having breakfast with Steve in the right body shouldn’t be something that petrifies her with fear. But he might give her that look, the look that says, ‘there’s something not normal about you,’ and, ‘I can’t believe I didn’t realize how unnatural, how _freakish_ , you are until just now.’ She treasures the shiny-bright secret beside her heart, and that look would tarnish it.

 _‘Am I that weak, that I let the opinion of a man over forty times younger than me mean so much?’_ The thought slips free before Loki can stop it. Despite herself, despite everything, it makes her laugh. Yes, of course it means so much. No, she is not weak. And if she is, it’s not because of that.

At least she’s learned enough between the last time she was a woman and today to know that she’s not wrong, and she’s just as right as the real Asgardians. Perhaps someday she’ll even be gracious enough to acknowledge to Thor, Odin, and Frigg that, pigheaded and disapproving as the lot of them were when it came to her being anything other than a prince and their son or brother, it wasn’t something they could ever begin to really understand. She just hopes that the next time a Jotunn baby ends up in their hands, they try to have a little more patience when it comes to things like gender.

Loki gets back to her feet and heads for the closet. Dithering is getting her nowhere. She chooses a lightweight pair of trousers and an undershirt. A few seconds longer at the closet and she sighs and grabs a thin button up shirt as well. There’s no point in potentially scandalizing Steve further. Then she changes from sleepwear of a tee shirt and boxers to her chosen outfit, eyes averted and hands touching her body as little as possible to divorce herself from the skin she’s wearing. It’s always hardest when she’s naked, or nearly so.

Clothes successfully changed, she closes her eyes, gives a quick wave of her hand, and _shifts_. Half a head shorter. Narrower shoulders. Smaller feet and hands. Smooth throat, no prominent bump. Only subtle curves – she is Loki, slender hipped with small, high breasts, not Freyja or Sigyn or Sif; she is forever tall and thin and cynical, in any body she calls her own. Softer features, but slightly so, ever so slightly so. A gentling of her mouth, a narrowing of her jaw, a relaxing of her brow. No need to grow her hair. She never changes her eyes or her nose. A trade of testicles for ovaries, cock for cunt. And now –

Loki opens her eyes. And now she is right again. She makes quick work of rolling up pant legs and sleeves, cinching the belt a notch or two tighter to fit her changed waistline. “Time for breakfast,” she tells herself. Her feet don’t move toward the door. She takes a deep breath, sends a mental plea to the Norns for good luck, and forces herself to walk out of the bedroom, down the stairs, past the living room, and into the dining room.

“Good morning,” she says as she sits down at her place at the table, deliberately casual.

Steve’s attention is on his meal rather than on her. “Good morn –” He breaks off, looking up from his plate. His wide-eyed look of silent surprise seems to last ages, though in all actuality it probably isn’t for more than a few seconds. “Good morning,” he says again, sounding rather stunned. “Wow.”

“Wow?” Loki echoes. ‘Wow’ is much more ambiguous than she’d like. She really only likes ambiguity when she’s on the delivering end, not the receiving end.

“Well, you told me about the shape shifting months ago, and asking ‘Where’d Loki go?’ is a dumb question, since I heard you come down the stairs and you still look like yourself, only like a woman instead,” Steve says. “So what’s the occasion for the, uh, the change?”

This is going far better than Loki could have hoped. She can only keep hoping that it stays this way. “There’s no occasion. I’m just – I’m a woman today, that’s all.”

“I noticed, believe me,” Steve says with a crooked little smile. “You just decided to be a woman today?”

Loki shakes her head. “No, I woke up as one.”

“You woke up like this?”

Again Loki shakes her head. “No. I woke up as a woman in my – in my other body. I changed forms so that my inside would match my outside.”

“Oh,” Steve says, looking at her thoughtfully. “Do you change like this a lot?”

“More often than I’d like,” Loki admits. “Broadly speaking, I do every year or so, sometimes more and sometimes less. I’m never certain how long it’s going to last. It’s been anywhere from as short as a day to as long as a year or more. It’s rather inconvenient.”

“Well, if you’re going to change bodies more than just this once, and it’s likely going to last longer than just today, do you want to head out to Fulton after you eat to get some clothes that’ll actually fit you right when you’re a woman?” Steve asks.

Loki blinks hard. That’s it? That’s his reaction? “You’re not real,” she says. She clutches the loose fabric of her trousers in tight fists and attempts to ground herself in the face of such impossibly casual acceptance. “You can’t possibly be real.”

“Says the shape shifting god sharing my head,” Steve says, gently teasing. Loki doesn’t smile, and Steve says, more seriously, “Hey. I wasn’t always a soldier. Before the procedure, I was just a sketch artist. I made enough to split the rent with Bucky on a little place in a rough neighborhood. I didn’t have the money for all the canvases and paints and all the rest of the art supplies upstairs, but I had graphite pencils and a sketch pad. I’d do portraits and caricatures and little scenes that caught my eye. But my absolute favorites were the portraits. On the weekends I’d go to clubs that catered to a pretty specific set of people, and I’d just sit in a corner and draw. No one gave me any trouble, because no one there wanted to be given any trouble themselves. But people would see me drawing, and more than a few times a night, people would come over and ask me to sketch them, or sketch their sweetheart, or the both of them together. I made some of my best money doing portraits that would never see the light of day because they weren’t ‘appropriate’. Men holding hands with other men, or with their arms around each other’s waists, or cuddled up together in a booth. Women, real classy dames, dressed to the nines and looking like visions, who come Monday would be back in pants and suspenders and work shirts. The thing is, doing those portraits on the weekends was ten times better than anything I did during the work week, and you know why?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Loki says, and inwardly winces as she hears her own words out loud. “Sorry. I’m just on edge. Please. Tell me why.”

“It’s alright,” Steve says. “It’s because they shone when I looked at them. Outside those clubs, during the daytime and at work, nobody saw them, not really, but when they were there, when someone looked at them, _saw_ them, and didn’t think anything bad about them, just how great they’d look captured on paper, they shone. Sometimes, when the lighting was perfect, the dames in those clubs looked more beautiful than any I’d ever seen walking around in broad daylight, or hanging off Bucky’s arm, and my fingers would just itch to draw them. Different was good there. It was something special. Something people valued. Know what was strange after that? The army. Everything’s the same, clothes, haircuts, meals, bunks, tents, everything. It’s supposed to promote unit cohesion, and that’s great, but I’m damn lucky I got to hand-pick my own team, because we specialized in different. And this…this has gone completely off topic, hasn’t it? Well. What I mean to say is, when you’re a man, you’re Loki, and when you’re a woman, you’re still Loki, and what’s on the outside doesn’t change how I feel about you.” He looks at her expectantly. “Okay?”

It takes several seconds for Loki to realize she’s gaping at him, and she snaps her mouth shut while her thoughts whirl and clamor in her head. “I think you’d be ill-suited for Asgard,” she says at last.

“Is that a bad thing?” Steve asks.

“No,” she says, and she’s not sure if she wants to laugh or cry. “No, it’s a very good thing. For me.”

“So the Æsir aren’t all that, um….” Steve shrugs. “What word am I looking for here?”

“Forward thinking?” Loki suggests. “Open-minded? Accepting? No. All boys grow up to be men, and all girls grow up to be women, and there’s never any room for change or differences in there. It was bad enough I chose sorcery and intellectual pursuits over honing my skills at fighting and weaponry. The few times I was caught as a child were enough to teach me that boys are always supposed to be boys, no matter how loudly their minds might protest sometimes. Truthfully, though, I’ve come to realize it’s not really their fault. I finally figured that out for myself the first time I took on my – my true form, that of a Jotunn. You see, on Asgard and Midgard – and Vanaheim and Álfheim and Svártalfaheim – one is either male or female, as determined by the sex they are born as – at least that’s how it’s supposed to work. On Jotunheim, however, it’s – well, it’s either a lot simpler or a lot more complicated, depending on how you view it. There is no male or female. There are just Jotnar. Fa – Odin said that when he picked me up, I turned into an ás, a male infant indistinguishable from all other male infants on Asgard. So he saw a boy and I was raised as any boy would be raised.”

“But you were still a Jotunn,” Steve says, his voice filled with understanding.

“But I was still a Jotunn,” Loki agrees. “I doubt other Jotnar feel as confused as I did. After all, they know they’re Jotnar, they’re raised as Jotnar, and male and female doesn’t enter into it. After a millennium being raised by and living amongst a race of people who are always male or always female, the culture – that way of thinking – is seared into me. I can’t be simply Jotunn. Instead, I’m Loki, frequently a man, less frequently a woman, but never permanently one or the other.” There was also that one memorable occasion during which she was a horse for nearly a year, but it’s probably best she keep that one to herself for a while longer.

Steve, much to Loki’s relief, shows no signs of pity. He just smiles that unbelievably lovely smile of his and gets up from the table. “I’ll go get your breakfast,” he says. “I left it in the oven to keep it warm.”

Loki smirks at her place setting once Steve is in the kitchen. Oh, how she loves these little reminders that for all his immortality, for all his impossible steadfast goodness, Steve is still very much a human when it comes to some things. He never makes a hot breakfast or lunch in the dead of summer. That her breakfast was left to warm meant he cooked this morning, likely eggs and pan fried potatoes, which means either the milk is out or has turned sour and neither of them noticed until it was too late to have a simple bowl of breakfast cereal.

Steve delivers her a plate of two eggs over easy and pan fried potatoes, just as she predicted, and presents her with a frosty glass of orange juice with a flourish. “Breakfast is served. Lazybones.”

“I hope you don’t have any expectation that I’ll suddenly take over all the cooking while I’m a woman,” Loki says, accepting the glass and taking a sip. Mm. Tart, sweet, and very cold. Wonderful.

“Please don’t,” Steve says, and though his shudder is theatrical Loki doubts it’s entirely feigned. “Really, please don’t. The one time you made dinner for us was enough.”

“I thought you found it amusing,” Loki says, looking up at him with a wicked spark in her eyes.

He grins back down at her and leans against the kitchen table. “Very amusing. So amusing it should never have a follow up dinner challenge it for the ‘Weirdest Meal of Steve’s Life’ award. I don’t know if I’m up to talking any more food into letting me eat it…and the animated pink spaghetti noodles were just…. You have a heck of an imagination, Loki.”

“Now why won’t you believe me when I say the noodle dish is traditional Asgardian fare?” Loki asks. She can feel a smile creeping in at the corners of her lips, and she does her best to fight it back.

He points to her face and his grin grows. “Because of that. You couldn’t keep a straight face for even a second trying to feed me that line of crap.”

“It _was_ a bit of a stretch,” Loki admits, smiling fully, and she digs into her (voiceless, motionless, normal colored) breakfast with gusto as he laughs and shakes his head.

“We’ll head out to Fulton after you finish,” Steve says, pushing off the table and letting his right hand rest briefly, ever so briefly, on her shoulder, before moving to his seat to finish eating his own breakfast. His fingertips are like brands, leaving five tiny points of heat sizzling through her shirt and undershirt onto her skin, where she would swear she’s been permanently marked with his fingerprints in an unheard of reversal of claiming, with human as claimant and god as claimed.

Loki studies him carefully from beneath lowered lashes, giving the pretense of paying attention to her food while shooting him sidelong glances. Has nothing truly changed? Even with one such as Steve, it’s next to impossible to credit. She keeps a close watch, and her scrutiny is eventually rewarded when she catches him giving her a surreptitious look of his own. There’s that steady warmth and affection, as always, but beneath it – beneath it, his blue eyes are hot with the smoldering embers of a well-banked fire.

 _'Nothing has changed how he feels about me, indeed,'_ Loki thinks, and she’s not sure where her emotions lie. On the one hand, Steve has finally, _finally_ , been dishonest, and she can take him off the pedestal she placed him on at last. On the other, he’s attracted to her. To _her_. If she can have his love – his lust – even just part of the time, even just as a woman, she’ll take it in an instant, grasp it in both hands and not look back once.

That thought keeps her preoccupied throughout her meal, and she polishes off her eggs and potatoes without even truly seeing or tasting what’s on her plate, just staring blankly at a rather artistic looking sanded down knot on the tabletop as she contemplates how to go about broaching the subject with Steve. Her distraction continues as she washes her plate and glass clean in the sink, as she drops an oversized hat on her head to shade her eyes from the sun, as she gives her shoes a single look and decides instead to make the soles of her feet as tough as the hide of an old bull elephant until she has a pair that will fit her feet properly, shoes made for the feet of a woman and not for those of a man. Her mind finally reaches a decision as she herself reaches the front door where Steve is patiently waiting, looking smarter than he had when she first came downstairs: his shirt has been exchanged for one that’s never seen the inside of his studio, and his hair is damp from where he clearly just ran a comb through it. He’s cleaned himself up nicely for nothing more than a long, hot walk to a street full of clothing stores and back – with her.

Oh. Yes, taking a page out of Steve’s book is probably the best way to approach him, even if being straightforward is so very unlike Loki as to be almost uncomfortable to think about.

“Off we go,” Steve says cheerfully, opening the door and motioning for her to step into the flood of sunlight first. Loki always thought it was a silly bit of tradition, warriors doing small, frivolous gestures for women that they were all perfectly capable of doing themselves as a way to avoid giving them the respect that other warriors garnered, but never, never has she been on the receiving end of one of those small, frivolous gestures herself, and she knows down to the very marrow of her bones that Steve respects her no matter what form she wears. She decides to enjoy the novelty, sailing gracefully through the doorway and smiling at Steve. He beams back, smile almost absurdly wide.

Loki waits until their house is no longer in sight before saying, as matter-of-factly as she could, “You find me attractive like this, don’t you?”

Steve blushes deeply, but to his credit, his voice is steady as he answers. “I find you attractive.”

“What about this body attracts you to me?” Loki asks.

“The part where it’s you,” Steve says. “I wouldn’t find your body half as attractive if there was someone else inside it.”

A tingle of pleasure runs through Loki from the roots of her hair to the soles of her hard, leathery bare feet. It’s not just because he’s gone so long without seeing a woman. He finds Loki, and Loki specifically, attractive. She can’t help asking one more question to confirm this. “Then you’re attracted to me as a woman because I am me, and not just because I am a woman today?”

“I’m attracted to _you_ because you’re _you_ , full stop,” Steve says. His face is a study in expressions, simultaneously amused, exasperated, and hesitant. “This is just so unexpected. Not bad, just unexpected. I mean, when we met, you said you were a widower and a father of four. I never imagined….”

“No, I don’t expect that anyone would have imagined this,” Loki says. “And while I am a widower, I’m a father of three, not four, and a mother of one. The ‘mother of one’ part is the reason I ended up with a wife and three other children. Odin couldn’t have such an unmanly son shaming the royal house. A marriage was arranged mere years after I gave birth to my eldest. It was an attempt to make me become manlier.” She sweeps a hand up and down her body and arches an eyebrow at Steve. “As you can see, even the plans of the Allfather fail at times.”

Steve chuckles a bit and rubs the back of his neck, looking at her sidelong and then away. “So are you attracted to, to men? As well as women, I mean?”

“Kindly take note that it was an arranged marriage,” Loki says dryly. “There is no ‘as well’ about it. Regardless of my sex or gender at any given moment, I’ve only ever been attracted to men. I hope this isn’t a problem for you.”

“Not at all,” Steve assures her, and his words are accompanied by a faint sigh of relief and a slump of his broad shoulders. Then he stiffens and starts to say, “Um, Loki –”

“Before you even begin to ask such a ridiculous question, let me put it this way,” Loki says. “If I didn’t pride myself on hiding it so well, I’d think you a blind fool for not noticing how in – how attracted I am to you.”

Had it been nighttime, Steve’s answering smile could have lit up the street for blocks. He takes her hand in his, and he and Loki both look at the contrast of her long, slender palm and fingers against his big, sturdy hand, so tan in comparison to her fair skin.

“What are you doing?” she asks him quietly.

“As Howard would say, I’m testing a hypothesis,” Steve says. He laces his fingers through hers and gives her hand a gentle squeeze. “Like I thought. A perfect fit.”

“Yes,” she says, squeezing his hand back and trying to convey all her love, her joy, her wonder, through that single, simple gesture. “A perfect fit indeed.”

They walk all the way to Loeser’s without letting go of each other.

* * *

Eight marvelous days follow the morning Loki was almost too nervous to go downstairs as herself for the first time, eight marvelous days brimming with marvelous firsts.

There is the first time Loki has choices for clothing as a woman that don’t involve illusion spells, and she stares around the women’s department in overwhelmed awe for a long moment before marching off to find herself some proper trousers, shirts, shoes, and undergarments. She has choices – and she can choose to be practical. When she spies a short-sleeved dark goldenrod dress on a hanger that falls to just below her knees, and a pair of dark leather t-strap pumps that fit her perfectly, she decides that she can choose to be beautiful as well. If she is to judge by the look in Steve’s eyes with every article of clothing she selects, she’d have to guess that he’s of the opinion that she’s beautiful no matter what her choice in clothing may be.

Equally wonderful in an entirely different way is the first time she’s kissed as a woman, which doubles as the first time she and Steve kiss. It’s the sort of thing that Loki would have thought would be a perfectly preserved memory, like a dragonfly in amber, but instead it’s just overwhelming flashes of sensation that stay with her: the sound of their laughter, alto and deep baritone; the smell of a single hot sugar cookie as they playfully tussle over the last one from the batch; the feel of Steve’s hands cradling her jaw as he leans in; the taste of sugar granules on his lips and, eventually, of the sweetness of the inside of his mouth which she is sure is only matched by hers, given how many cookies they’d both eaten; the sight of Steve’s face as he slowly pulls away, as poleaxed and amazed and delighted as Loki. There’s no need to come to a spoken agreement to decide that there will have to be much more kissing in their future.

Then, of course, there’s the first time Steve joins her in the living room while she’s filling up an empty book with stories. She lies on her back with her head in his lap and uses one of his pencils in lieu of her usual pen, writing nearly upside down and reading out loud as she goes along while he runs his fingers through her hair slowly, methodically, dragging his short nails gently across her scalp and pulling softly at the strands as he separates them. Were she a cat, she’d purr loud enough to drown out an automobile engine. He laughs quietly when she pushes her head into his hand as soon as he stops, and obediently begins to play with her hair again. They make this a daily tradition; for an hour, she tells Steve new stories and writes them down, and in exchange, he gives her head rubs that even the gods would envy.

Her favorite first, however, has to be the new bedtime ritual. The both of them, teeth brushed and faces washed, Steve wearing boxers and undershirt and Loki wearing the same, as she can’t stand the way the nightgown she bought bunches up, slip beneath the sheet of their massive bed, and, rather than staying on their respective sides, they slide toward the middle as if gravity pulls them together. There, side by side, they share the slow, lazy kisses of the exceptionally tired, murmuring endearments into each other’s chin or cheek or jaw when their aim is off and they’re only a good yawn from falling asleep. Loki faces Steve, pillowing her head on Steve’s thick bicep and throwing her arm across his waist, twining their legs together. Steve faces Loki, the hand on the arm she’s commandeered as a pillow gently holding her skull and ever so slowly ruffling her hair, his lips at the crown of her head and his free arm holding her securely. This is how they fall asleep, so close together they could be mistaken for a single being. They are a perfect fit.

On the ninth morning, Loki wakes up in the wrong body. It’s too small, too delicate, too soft, too curved. There aren’t enough lines and angles for it to be correct.

He doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Steve’s still in bed with him – sound asleep and dead to the world, but right at his side and holding him close. This transformation will not be like the last one, then. Asleep or not, he has an audience.

Who is he trying to fool? Audience or no audience, of course this transformation will be different. This time, he’s saying goodbye to a romance with a man who carries his heart in his hands, and he has no idea when he’ll have the right body to pick it up again.

Loki wriggles experimentally, testing the strength of Steve’s grip on him. There’s no way to pull free of his embrace without waking his – his – damn it all, they’ll be back to being friends in a few short minutes. And perhaps it’s a little bit selfish and greedy of him, but if Steve doesn’t wish to relinquish his hold on him, even in sleep, then Loki will gladly retake his most common form while still held in his most beloved friend’s arms, just for a moment, so that he might feel what it’s like to be held by Steve as a man might be held by another. To break one more of Asgard’s taboos.

 _‘Well, they whispered behind my back that I was God of Ergi for a reason’_ , Loki thinks philosophically. He breathes in the clean, masculine scent surrounding him – of Steve surrounding him – shuts his eyes tightly, commits the feeling of how perfectly they fit together to memory, and begins to change back, slowly, incrementally, unobtrusively, doing his best to ensure that he doesn’t startle Steve into wakefulness with a sudden growth spurt or abrupt boniness in his jaw or shoulders.

Finally Loki’s transformation is complete, and he allows himself to bask in the sensation of being held in his sleeping friend’s embrace for a few seconds before reluctantly beginning the process of disentangling himself. He’s only just managed to slip his arm free from around Steve’s waist and pull away a few inches when Steve’s hold tightens. Loki freezes.

“Where,” Steve asks sleepily, eyes closed, “Do you think you’re going?”

“Bathroom,” Loki says, and winces at the sound of his voice. Once again, it’s unmistakably male.

“Liar,” Steve accuses without heat. “If I let you up you won’t come back. You’re staying right here.”

“You have noticed that I’m a man again, yes?” Loki asks.

“No, it completely escaped my notice,” Steve says, and he opens his eyes to blink slowly at Loki and smile. “Gee. Look at you. Still so damn beautiful I can hardly believe it.”

It’s Loki’s turn to blink at Steve, though he does so in disbelief and breathless hope. “Steve….”

“I did tell you that my feelings for you hadn’t changed,” Steve says. He gives Loki a mischievous smile and adds, “And to quote you, ‘If I didn’t pride myself on hiding it so well, I’d think you a blind fool for not noticing how in love I am with you’.”

“That’s not what I said,” Loki whispers, his heart in his throat.

“That’s because I didn’t change my mind about being totally honest at the last minute,” Steve says. “Come on, lie down with me again. It’s too early to get out of bed.”

Cautiously, ever so slowly, Loki scoots back to his original position, or as close to it as he can get now that he’s half a head taller again. Steve reaches up with his free hand and traces Loki’s facial features with soft fingers, stroking over his brow and orbital bones, down his nose, along his cheekbones and sharp jaw, running the pad of his thumb over his mouth, all with a look of deep and abiding love in his eyes. He leans in and brushes a whisper-soft kiss across Loki’s lips, once, twice, thrice, then pulls back to touch his forehead to Loki’s and twine the fingers of their free hands together.

“How’s the fit now?” Loki asks, almost inaudibly.

“Still perfect,” Steve says. “Still perfect.”


End file.
